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Laptop Anti-Theft Devices
mathin writes: "The NYTimes has an interesting article about laptop theft 'alarms' and services to help track down your laptop if it's swiped." Laptops are a lot like bicycles: if you have a 50-pound laptop, it doesn't need a lock.
MI5 brought a few trackers so they can find where their pissed agents left them...
or linux or *bsd..........
The majority of the companies I work with use capital insurance policies to cover the cost of replacing stolen equipment. With the proliferation of anti-theft devices, will insurance companies take the automobile route and provide discounts for using them? Or will they begin to require such devices to provide coverage at all?
A couple of years ago, I bought a brand new laptop. I went into a store for a couple of minutes and left my month old laptop sitting on the seat of my car, door unlocked (stupid, I know), knowing I would only be gone for a couple minutes.
When I got back home, I tried to boot up and nothing happened after the fan kicked on. After a couple of minutes of jiggling the power cord wire, I opened the case and found that my processor was stolen along with my two 64MB ram units. Someone had bothered to open it up, take the stuff, and close it again
That is definitely a situation in which tracking would not have helped.
*everything* is Orwellian to cats.
You can ride a 50 lb bike away, you still have to carry a 50 lb laptop.
If your laptop is 50 pounds, it's not really a laptop, is it?!
If I'm in public somewhere, I'm not leaving my laptop unattended.
I should probably be surprised that people would do this,
but I work Tech Support, so I deal with people
all day, and know how stupid they are.
It's easy to stand out when the general level of competence is so low.
50-pound computers are what we here in the industry call "desktops".
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Pogue's article had some great things to say about the technology of tracking down stolen laptops. It would have been good to make the point that, many times, the information on the laptop is worth far more than the laptop itself.
About 18 months ago Qualcomm's CEO had his laptop swiped during a conference. The laptop was thought to have all kinds of trade secrets. Losing a several-thousand dollar laptop was a trivial loss for the CEO. But shareholders were rightfully worried that Qualcomm's strategies for implementing CDMA rollout were now in the hands of rivals. To my knowledge, they never got the laptop back. And the theft was, I suspect, for the hard drive's trade secrets rather than for the actual laptop.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
Well, I'm glad that I kept my Mac Portable, which weighs in at 21 pounds. Let's see some schmoe try to steal that...
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
they could implement something like this into laptop security. I agree it would probably be a bit excessive, but you know as well as I do, that nobody else would ever try to take your notebook once word got around. Check out the video clip of it in action... I'm sure most if you /.er's out there have already seen it in action.
Id lock my 50 pound bike in Amsterdam if I was you.
/Dread
Gr
this statistic was startling:
As many as 30 percent of the stolen laptops are gone for good because they are never used to go online after being stolen.
Never mind that If I had a system like that I would just wipe the drive to begin with. Of course, common crooks may not bother.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
great, another NYTimes article.
or very sharp nails.
a primitive but very effective anti-thefth device
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
I just Chain up a SilverBack Gorilla to my laptop. Ive never had a problem getting my laptop back.
"All I can tell the "lesser of two evils" folks is that if they keep voting for evil, they'll keep getting evil."-Lp.org
I dont feel like registering at NY Times, but lets see, the harddrive, memory, battery, cd drive, floppy drive, and motherboard can all be removed. Im thinking maybe a tracking device can be placed behind the screen or somewhere underneath the keyboard. Maybe it can be burned in behind the power on switch and if it gets stolen and a thief tries to mess with it it screws the laptop up and makes it useless.
Christ my monitor doesn't weigh 50 pounds. How's the gravity up there at the Geek Compound anyway?
It hurts when I pee.
That has got to be the most easily comprimised password method ever!
you: Tilt left - right - back to arm laptop, and leave...
you : come back and tilt laptop right - back - left
Person outside looking in sees you do this and comes in and takes your laptop, disarming it with your (super secret password tilt combo) while you feel secure cause you spent a hundred dollars on a security device.
what a joke, that method shouldn't even exist, too many stupid users are gonna use it.
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
I have this vision of a stripped laptop on cinderblocks.
Best Slashdot Co
Can some one please post the text of the article?
Osborne 1 computer
http://www.obsoletecomputermuseum.org/osborne/o
Ive seen devices that has a button on your belt buckle and a battery on the case, if it walks, press the button on the bat belt.
ZAAAAAAAAAAAP. Watch them wriggle in a pile of piddle shuddering and slobbering
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
One of the big issues here is the things that are on the hard drive rather than the actual physical laptop.
I remember a few years back when me and a few friends were continuously scared of getting a knock on the door from the authorities, we had ideas to develop a device to entirely wipe the hard drive.
Initially, this consisted of a coil of thick guage copper wire around the HD, which was in turn connected across the mains supply. Guaranteed to fuck over the HD big time.
Problem was, that we never had the guts to put one round our main HD, because we knew that whatever mechanism used, it could get accidently turned on.
We also worried about, if the police did turn up, how would we know whether it was a friendly visit or not, then wipe or HDs for no reason.
All because of the anarchists cookbook and about 10 porn pictures.....
Excellent news ... as we know, audio alarms and tracking bugs have totally eliminated theft in the automobile industry, and I imagine these devices will do the same for laptops.
There are about 200 comments per article. Out of those comments there are at least 100 trolls, flamebaits and offtopics. Sometimes the number of normal to mod-down replies ratio is 2:10.
The amount of advertising on $lashdot increased dramatically while the quality of articles and the general atmosphere just stinks! No one is going to subscribe to $lashdot just because they can't follow the rules of english grammar and spelling.
$lashdot shows that it's dying.
User Name = aslashdotuser
password = slashdot
Does anyone know if I can hack this Laptop alarm to run Linux? Right now I am running Linux on my toaster, my microwave and my ten speed bike. I was running it on my toilet, but it kept having problems with my log files. Anyways, let me know!
True story:
I was working in a corner of a cafe late at night when I guy came in, sat beside me, stuck a knife to my side and said "put the laptop in the bag".
My laptop was locked to the table, but I gladly unlocked it in return for my safety.
Anyway, insurance covered the loss.
Also, I had a removable hard drive with all my work on it, and I pleaded with the thief to let me keep it, and he let me!
So ultimately, I ended up with a newer machine, and a spare drive, and the thief ended up with a password protected laptop. Just goes to show, crime doesn't pay.
-... ---
I recently purchased a $2500 laptop (Toshiba 5105-S607) to use between work and home, as well as when I'm away from home. It's pretty powerful, so it also serves as a desktop replacement for my home machine.
I can't understand why people will pay thousands of dollars for a piece of machinery, then carlessly leave it at a table or seat while they go off and do something else. Even if it's company equipment, somebody paid for that laptop. I think these are the same people who leave their car running with the keys in the ignition while they drop off their 3-day-late movie at Blockbuster, or run into store to grab a coke. It never hurts to be overly cautious.
When I'm at work, I lock the laptop down with one of those 4-digit combo locks attached to a metal wire. I know that any person with an interest in my $2500 machine can come along with a pair of wire cutters and hack off the wire. Having the lock on there is to basically keep the honest people honest. When I leave for lunch I take off the combo lock and lock the laptop up in my drawer. When I'm done for the day I pack everything up and take it back home with me.
Noise alarms are just annoying and don't really help, much like car alarms. When's the last time you ran towards an alarm, thinking to help overpower a thief? If anything, like the article says, the thief would just chuck the alarm card, or better yet feign embarassment while pretending it really is his/her laptop.
Simply paying attention to your surroundings and taking that extra step to secure your laptop will often work better than more expensive options, which unfortunately might cause people to let down their guard.
My guess was that either A) he's talking about an *old* laptop, back when memory was still expensive and some models used upgradable, socketed CPUs that were identical to the ones used in desktop systems, or B) someone with an identical model notebook (except a broken one) did a quick switch with his, and he didn't notice the different serial number.
It'd be neat if there was an embeddable tracking device available, that you could put in your laptop in case it is stolen. Just call this tracking company up and ask them where it is.
I suppose some might consider that a privacy issue, but I don't think it would be if it's a service you could pay for.
Just a thought.
IBM has the right idea. In some (all?) of their laptops, the main board and hard drive have passwords that can't be disabled or bypassed without major surgery. If you forget the password, tough, the subassembly must be replaced. If this was more common, laptops would be less attractive to thieves.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
IBM has some pretty nice new security that allows for even the HDDs within laptops to be locked up, even when the HDDs are removed from the machine and put in another machine. Pretty nice for securing data, and would have been nice for the company to know that the data couldn't be accessed.
You can't ride a 50-pund laptop. 'Nuff said.
goats.com: better than
With wireless being put on-chip, I don't think this will be a problem forever. There's too much marketing money at stake for companies not to know where you are all times.
Use a pencil and paper! The handwriting recognition is great!
I mean, if I were going to steal a laptop, I don't think I would have any problem ejecting and ditching the card. And unless I knew what information was on it (and knew it was useful) I don't think I would even think twice about reformatting the drive. And if I did want the data off of it, then I'm sure it's only a matter of time before there is a way to crack it.
Wow...sounds really hard to get around! Once criminals know how the card works, it'd be quite easy to get around.
"If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards."
If your laptop is 50 pounds, it's not really a laptop, is it?!
:P
well i guess it all depends on the lap
One thing to remember for you wanna-be hax0rz:
/mbr
-Flash the BIOS with a "known clean" bios dl'd from the manufacturer website.
-fdisk
--end transmission--
Laptops are a lot like bicycles: if you have a 50-pound laptop, it doesn't need a lock.
What the hell are you talking about? If I have a 50 pound bicycle, that's too heavy to ride away?
And 50 pounds of laptop is too heavy to lug away? Maybe 200 pounds, but sheesh I could carry 50 pounds under my arm (I am bigger and stronger than average, though). Not to mention a 50 pound laptop would probably have a handle.
Oh wait, it's michael posting the story. Never mind.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
"Laptops are a lot like bicycles: if you have a 50-pound laptop, it doesn't need a lock."
;-)
On the contrary, they make great low power cluster nodes. Jusd leave yours here, I'll watch after it while your gone.
First entomology, then virology, and finally bioinformatics systems. Bugs follow me wherever I go.
I know what my code would be...
Up-Up-Down-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right-A...ah, nevermind
But seriously, if this thing was beeping, who wouldn't just pop that sucker out and toss it?
The best laptop-theft-prevention is staying with the computer. That may be where wearable computers have their best value. A computer around your belt with a glasses-style display won't be easily forgotten.
Miko O'Sullivan
I'm not saying that this is necessarily easy to achieve in a way that the average meeting-going PHB finds usable but which his 13yr daughter can't crack in 5 minutes, but reasonable levels of protection are feasible.
Of course, you have to rely on the PHB not writing down pass-phrases and leaving them plainly visible.
It wouldn't be the first time.
Anyways, I'm sure he was most distraught about losing his OutLook contact list. Which, of course, isn't the company standard, but that's what the CEO wanted to use.
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
They are software solutions. They require the operating system to be operating and they rely on the stupidity of the thief.
What happens when your stolen laptop is running a "secure" operating system? In the case of my laptop, I am dual-booting both Windows 2000 Professional and Red Hat Linux 7.2. I have both OSes password protected.
The only method for the crooks to be able to use my machine would be to either replace the hard drive, fdisk the drives and reinstall an operating system. So, how would these wonderful software solutions work in my case? Oh, that's right, they won't ever work for me.
These services are only good for those that are running insecure operating systems on their laptops, or "secure" operating systems that have no passwords and save the last user account information in the login scren.
--
.sig seperator
--
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
I used to use a nice shakle lock and a 50kg weight (110 lb) to lock my bike up... and one day, when my bike wasn't attached to it, some bugger stole my weight and lock. I can't imagine why... I still have both keys for the lock. I got a new shackle lock and from then on locked my bike up to a steel stair case. If someone wants your bike/lock/laptop/phone then there's not alot you can do. I always thought that a small remote controlled bomb might be a good solution.... someone steels your laptop and boom! ... Problem is it's probably your brother. Ooops!
return 0; }
The article states that many companies software allows a piece of info (IP, phone number, etc) to be broadcasted once it goes online. What happens when you have software such as Zone Alarm which blocks all outgoing connections except those specified by the user? I could see that it would probably work if you had enables that program, but if you had not, the thief would see a ncie little message saying that it is trying to conenct once s/he got online.
just something to consider
I just Chain up a SilverBack Gorilla to my laptop. Ive never had a problem getting my laptop back.
I'd believe you if you had said that you never had any problems with anyone _else_ getting your laptop, but I'm sure that you would have a problem getting your laptop from the back of a gorilla... That's the problem with having perfect security, it makes the product perfectly useless.
Even my Osbourne One only weighs twenty-four pounds.
I thought about that, long after the fact. It occured to me that a swap could have occured, and I wouldn't have noticed. I was so agog that only the memory and cpu were missing to bother to look for other differences.
*everything* is Orwellian to cats.
If you don't want your laptop stolen, don't ever let it get into a situation where it can be stolen, because (people being what they are) it will be. And if you think you absolutely can't live without your laptop, do yourself a favour and evaluate what you actually mean by that. Chances are you'll find it's simply not true.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
>[When] the crook goes online [with your laptop]...
Er, not likely. The crook nicked your laptop to raise cash. Probably for buying drugs. The laptop will go to a front man for cash. The only 'perp' likely to get caught is the unwitting buyer. The buyer would simply get a surprise call from the police, with the news that the laptop they bought isn't theirs any more.
Still, you might get your laptop back... Unless the front man, or buyer, runs NoTrackerz (or something like that) on it before it is connected to the net. Or installs nice friendly Mandrake on it.
Are belong to us??
i use the same technique on my main box. its a good 50 pounds of stainless steel, rackmounted, 3'x2' sweet case. i dont have to worry much about anyone taking off with it at a lan party.
when I find myself you'll be the first to know.
Is there ANY way to recover a laptop stolen even if you know it's nic's mac address or old IP?
The article mentions the following:
"By piggybacking invisibly onto the Internet connection, it sends a critical piece of information to the tracking company: the laptop's Internet protocol (I.P.) address, the unique, multidigit number that identifies each computer on the Internet. Once the authorities are armed with that address, it's a piece of cake to subpoena the baddie's account records from the Internet service provider."
This is total crap. Is it never a piece of cake to subpoena a user's account from an (most major) ISPs. If an ISP isn't going to respond to a security complaint (Road Runner, @Home, ahem) then they probably won't even talk to you until you convince the police to contact them, which isn't too easy either.
You mean, like using the Marquee/Ticker screensaver and having the password scroll by after 15 minutes of inactivity?
GTRacer
- My password is "password"
Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
I go to school at SAIT in Calgary (www.sait.ab.ca) and they issue all their IT students brand new Toshiba Laptops.
:)
I managed to get a $0-Deductable thru my insurance company for like $35CDN, so I'm not really worried if it gets stolen.
On the other side of the coin tho, if I lost my laptop, I lose all my assignments, work, and valuable movies I trade around the network
As I just had my bike stolen recently (was locked to a cement fence post outside my house) I really know, that there is no absolute security. If they want your laptop, they're gonna get it.
Except I can't picture a guy walking down the street with a broken laptop, looking into a window, and going "hmmm, that one looks better, *switch*"
actually its up up down down left right left right b a b a start
PCPhoneHome has a product which claims to email "position data" regularly from your laptop (Any machine running Windows, MacOS, Linux, or PalmOS, they claim).
Ignoring however they manage to provide this GPS in software, and how they manage to send email via a variety of possible transports (without being detectable at the OS level, they claim to run at a much lower level), they have one claim in particular that is mind-boggling:
They have a couple of versions, the freeware version does everything above, and the $30 version claims that it can't be removed from a hard disk with "fdisk, low-level format, or format".
I think they're pushing snake oil. If they actually do everything they claim to do, I'd love to find out how. Does anyone have any experience with them?
1)Keep important data backed up
2)Set a boot password
3)Buy theft insurance
4)Sleep easy
Simple people talk of people, better people talk of events, great people talk of ideas.
When a loptop is stolen, the real loss is generally the data on the laptop; not the laptop itself. Granted it would be nice to find out who stole your laptop so you can show up at their door with a baseball bat and beat them to a bloody pulp, but retrieving one's data seems to me to be the real value in any of these *anti-theft* devices. I've tried a couple, but the only one I could find with data retrieval functionality was lucira's solution (http://www.lucira.com). I also tried ztrace's solution (http://www.ztrace.com) but didn't encountr any data-retrieval functionality.
i took the card out and smashed it in .5 seconds.
d0h, foiled again!!
When you intend to leave your laptop unattended, if only for a moment, you can "arm" it in any of several ways: by clicking a button, by using a taskbar menu or, if the lid is closed, by tilting it to three particular angles in a specific sequence
Slight problem that makes this useless - you have to remember to arm it, ie. your laptop is switched on, and the battery has not run dry. If you've got to remember to pick it up and hold it upside down you might as well just put it into hibernate mode, it saves power, and let the BIOS password deal with the thief.
The *real* problem is that laptops are stolen when you turn your back for a second because you're thinking of something else (without thinking "I should engage the security device by going dancing with my laptop"). If you are going to walk away from the laptop then *take it with you* or use BIOS-protected APM.
Even if it does work, the thief will know the alarm is activated so he'll pull out his gun and shoot you while he runs away. Or he might shoot you *before* he takes the laptop. I think I'll take the insurance payout instead ;-)
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
True story... my great grand father was a delivery person in the 30's in Indianapolis, Indiana for a drug store. He delivered to some pretty seedy areas of town, usually after work. It gets dark in the winter, and the delivery van he drove was obviously from a pharmacy, so there were always punks wanting what he was carrying.
He rigged a rocksalt loaded, homemade shotgun in the driver side door, crotch height. Basically it was a reloaded 20 guage round, mounted in a short length of pipe the same size as the shotgun shell. He then rigged a small rat trap with a pin on the swing arm to act as firing pin. He mounted this by weld in the door, cut a small hole in the side, and put some tape/paint over the hole to hide it. (this is an underpowered 20 guage round, don't panic).
He got stopped once at a T intersection and someone actually tried to force his door so they could rough him up and steal the trucks deliveries. He rolled the window down a crack and warned the fellow with a knife to back off or he would get it. The guy persisted and threated to break the window, so BLAMO, crotch full of rocksalt. Made the papers and everything.
The guy was bruised and scratched and didn't have much of a sex life for a couple of months, but he was a wanted hood so in jail he could be the catcher anyway. The cops fined my great grandfather (who went on years later to work in the sherrifs department for Marion County) and confiscated the door, but he was safe!
I think a nice, metal case laptop with a high energy discharge ala a stungun (isolate the metal outer shell from the guts) that can be triggered remotely would be great, along with a handy dandy space based tracker built into the frame of the case like a wireless network setup.
This gave me an idea for protecting my wife's laptop.
I edited the ifup script to e-mail the IP address to me. I want the thief to use the computer for a long period of time, and use it repeatedly, so I can track them. There is an autologin feature available for gdm and kdm, so I enabled it (I didn't know it could be used as a security feature). I also put some familiar looking icons on the desktop so the thief will feel at home and use the machine frequently, and hopefully they will click the big "connect to internet" icon.
Of course, I usually just use this to eject the CD-ROM when my wife is using the computer. I think it's funny, but I think she rolls her eyes. I can't be sure. Maybe a webcam...
if it's not powered up with the proper password it detonates 2 pound of plastic explosives.. destroying the laptop and hopefully getting the scumbag that stole it in the process.
Some night when you stagger in drunk and want to surf for your disgusting animal farm pr0n and you have forgotten your password... BLAM! One less lousy *nix user in the world. *does happy dance with nipsplode action*
My wife has a Pismo G3 from her employer, whose IT department bought her a Targus laptop bag with the order because "We do it for all Laptop orders". Never mind the fact that the bag was obviously made to fit a boxy PC laptop, not the curvy Pismo. Ultimately, she found a backpack with a laptop compartment built in, and bought it herself. She's willing to trade the fact that her laptop bag doesn't look "Professional" (read: pretentious) for the fact that nobody knows its a laptop bag. Nobody's stolen it yet....
And the Targus laptop bag is sitting somewhere on a spare desk in her department. Nobody else wants to use it, either.
Maybe it resides in the boot sector. fdisk and format don't touch the mbr without the \mbr flag. Depending on the low-level format, it might not touch the MBR either. If nothing else, most modern OSes don't use the BIOS for much, so you could put it all in a minimalistic BIOS. A driver for one ethernet card and one internal modem wouldn't need to be very big, and it doesn't need a whole network stack... just enough to do ICMP echo and TCP, or else send the data hidden in specially formatted ICMP echo packets to company headquarters, from which the email is actualy sent via TCP.
Of course, implementing this in a Curusoe laptop would be trivial if you got enough cooperation from Transmetta to have them compile your source and have it run in its own thread in the code morphing layer. And then they could provideyou with a firmware update floppy or something for your customers. They get to keep their codea secret and you get a virtually undetectable "silend alarm"... most firewalls let ICMP echo packets through without logging.
Copyright Violation:"theft, piracy"::Anti-Trust Violation:"thermonuclear price terrorism"<-Overly dramatic language.
I'd imagine that all of the school systems that are handing out laptops to their students could benefit from this if the price was right, although I'm still of the opinion that accidental physical damage is a greater threat to laptops (in any deployment locale) than theft. And more often than not the real value is in the data and program code, not the machinery itself.
And my employer has ceased to deploy physical security measures, figuring that insurance will replace anything, and usually with more up to date equipment.
Now whether or not this is cost effective is another issue.
Notice taped inside all lifts in the office building where I work, some weeks ago:
Laptop stolen, floor 12. Reward if given back: $10.000. No questions will be asked
Couple of days later, those notices had been removed. I never knew whether the laptop had been returned...
Why do laptops get stolen? Lets go through the list
1) leaving it unatended in a vehicle
2) leaving it unatended in a public (or even private place)
3) theft by force (steraling it at knife/gunpoint)
Those seem to be the most common. Numbers 1 and 2 can easily be circumvented by actually HOLDING ON TO IT. Number 3 you can do nothing about. Most likely, the security system will not be armed when Numebr 3 happens, so you are still SOL. So, why bother?
I have a dynamic dns client set up on my Mac OSX laptop. http://www.dyndns.org I can always get my computers ip address by doing an nslookup on it's dns entry. If it were ever stolen, I could ssh to it (as long as it's not behind a firewall). Once I have a command line on it, I could destroy my old data, get copies of the new users data that might reveal its location etc. I could even upload a script that caused the modem to call my caller id enabled cell phone. This is similar to that recent iMac recovery story where the guy used Timbuktu to find a computer.
I'm very very happy with Targus -- not just the quality, but also the support (broke the strap two years after getting the bag, they sent a new, improved strap, for free).
The big drawback to Targus bags is that they are heavy. That is also their strength, as the bag takes a lot of abuse, saving the laptop inside from harm.
Speaking of a good way to keep a laptop from being stolen is to not put it in a bag that screams, "There's a laptop in this bag!" , I have a pile of clean old Compaq laptop bags without the laptops...
These bags scream "There is a Compaq Laptop in this bag!", though there isn't -- I give them to family members to use as briefcases, lunch bags, and even keep one in the back of my truck to hold my jumper cables.
Nobody has stolen my jumper cables or my nieces schoolbooks... yet.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
Just wire the power switch across the nice big (low-self-discharge-rate!) Lion battery and a good ly length of nichrome wire into the thermite pack.
Tapping the power switch does nothing, but the thief who holds down the power switch for thirty seconds (make sure that the switch still illuminates the power LED) to see if the machine will still power up (with the laptop sitting, naturally, in his lap) will be cured of theft forever.
Just make sure you don't try to take this through airport security!
Lethal Protection.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
How difficult would it be to build GPS and a cheap cell modem into laptops? Dial into modem (probably at a hefty cost) and it sends back GPS coordinates. As long as the laptop has minimal power, it can be retrieved.
Anybody know of similar hardware?
1)Keep all your URL's for your animal and pedophilic pr0n under a profile in your real name
2)Forget backups, keep all pages cached right on hard drive, along with illegal correspondance to Charles Manson and your favorite pedeophile phriends.
3)Skip insurance and encryption.
4)Attach the "I hump kids" bumper sticker to the case cover
5)Place laptop in laptop back, wrapped in childrens underwear and sealed with dog collars
6)Place laptop with your business card and two pieces of recent personal mail taped to the bag on steps of police department nearest your home
Just get one of these babies and you'll no longer have a problem with laptop theft.
Mozilla's a nice operating system, but it needs a better browser.
> Laptops are a lot like bicycles: if you have a 50-pound laptop, it doesn't need a lock.
:)
Wha? The weight of a bicycle doesn't matter, it's the ridability of the thing. But I wouldn't even compare an unridable bicycle to a laptop, because what makes a one-wheeled bike hard to steal is its clunkiness, not its weight. Most people could make a getaway with a 50-pound box, but so easily not with a 3'X2' metal frame.
How supremely lame it has been for me to pick on this!
Ideas?
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Thanks for the bike! It's a beauty, eh...
I find the bolded part above a bit distressing. When I started readinga bout the Caveo card I assumed that the card becomes physically secured to the machine by some means or another. I imagined that there would perhaps be a short cable to the anti-theft jack that seem to exist on all new machines.
Imagine a car alarm on the exterior of a car, where a thief could just rip the blaring siren off and ditch it while driving away. Not that car alarms are 100% effective, but at least it's a somewhat pain in the ass to disable by comparison.
This also brings up another problem with laptops. PCMCIA cards in general are quite easy to remove, especially those wireless cards which protrude a good half-inch or more out of the PCMCIA slot. Ethernet and modem cards are relatively cheap these days, but wireless cards, hard drives, video input devices, and other toys are not. Even batteries and internal hard-drives are easy to grab, and they can bring in some good cash. A good crook could clear out a few thousand dollars worth of hardware in about 10 minutes, all inconspicuously since these things are quite pocketable.
Anyway, after using a notebook for quite some time and having one stolen at the office while I took a nap (all nighters suck) I would say the most cost effective theft-detterrant for the machine is the combo-lock/key notebook cable. They're a lot cheaper, more reliable to arm, and look more secure than the $100+ fancy alternatives proposed in the article above. I would argue that a cable-locked notebook looks like a serious pain in the ass to mess with, since it entails snippers and the like. I think the products mentioned in the NYtimes article might be good only when combined with a cable lock, but definitely not alone.
So does anyone know of ways to physically secure PCMCIA devices?
thoughts of modernizing the old glued-coin-to-the-floor joke, for a lappy
* old lappy / dos
* write proggy which plays the sound file "Someone Is Trying To steal Me!" Whenever any button is pressed. Plays for 60 seconds.
* epoxy
1) glue lappy to table top
2) walk away
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
My lap to anti-theft device magically makes my computer turn into a desktop system. No way anyone will every steal this away me, other than breaking into my house.
My only need for a laptop is for portability around the house. Anything on my computer is too valuable to risk being taken out in public.
Just my $0.02
-I'll hang up and listen...
My home was recently burgerarized and to my surprise they left two good laptops, i feel that the risk of the next owner (pawn shop) discovering the previous owner (me), via software registration/registry entries, scared 'em off. Of course the thiefs would not be familiar with high end concealment tools such as fdisk and format.
they did steal my laptop case to carry off the contents of my change jar, damn crackheads.
I am working on a device that installs in the case and works by proximity to a belt worn or key fob transciever. when the laptop, in its case, is too far from the transciever it will deliver about the equivelant voltage as a stun-gun via the handle.
i thought of this one day in Houston Intl. Airport, i was sitting at one of the overpriced bars with my heals cleanched around my laptop case to keep it from walking off without me.
I posted a similar method for IP address tracking here.
And getting a subpoena is *not* a trivial thing to do. you have to first present the information to law enforcement, hope that you get to talk to someone that's tech-savvy enough to understand *how* you tracked the laptop. Then you need to explain HOW you got their ISP's number to more tech-ignorant detectives, and *finally* you might get your case heard by a judge.
hey all, i just saw a deal on dealitup: http://www.dealitup.com/v33deal/topic.asp?ARCHIVE= &TOPIC_ID=95
for the laptop anti theft product everyone's talking about.
:) too there's no linux version yet. :(
anyways, i thought i'd pass it on since i normally just read the posts and comments and never comment.
keepin' it real,
nadya k.
basically if you go to the web site for lucira (http://www.lucira.com), try to buy the product, and enter this code: promo code: NN0DX682ZZLG7W35ZZ
then you can get 2yrs of mobilesecure for $24.99. (normally they charge something like 79 dollars for two years). i think it's some kind of promo that was suppowsed to be expire but the company doesn't seem to be checking. i just used the code to buy it for my toshiba satellite running xp which i use for work, and the whole thing only took a couple of minutes. cool.
If I could only get one of those for my laptop, I wouldn't need insurance!
AMCGLTD.COM. Where cats, science fictio
I think he just "stole" it himself to get the insurance claim.
- MbM
"A gun is a tool, Marian. No better, no worse than any other tool. An axe, a shovel, or anything." Shane (1953)
One of my longtime hobbies is photography. The camera market, like the laptop market, also has a sub-industry of carrying case makers. And, like laptop users, photographers are constantly hounded by thieves.
One innovative (and cheap) solution that popped up years ago: Use a diaper bag to transport your equipment.
Diaper bag advantages:
Cheap
Padded
Have many side pockets
Are the last thing someone would want to steal.
Note that the diaper bag solution is NOT appropriate for anyone who's top priority is not having their laptop stolen.
Too bad we're such an image conscious culture.
--Richard
Just make a tough case and install lo-jack. Track within minutes of loss.
So why not just use mouse motion then?
Hey, if your laptop has one of those button pointers, you can put your mouth over it use your tongue. That way no one can even see your secret unlock method.
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In the article, it mentions that those systems will need to be brought up and conected to the internet. Based upon the intelligence of most criminals, do you think they will know how to alter a Linux password?
Again, do you think that they will know that there is a Linux partition if that is only accesible with a boot disk?
One last thing. If a thief of my laptop actually knew how to overcome what you have described. Why the hell would he/she hook the system up to the internet? They would peruse my hard drive for files they might like, then wipe the drives clean and put what they want on the machine. Then and only then would they hit the internet with the laptop.
Does that make it clearer as to why that software is useless to me?
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The problem that I am referring to is how useless that software would be for me, since the thief would be unable to access my system, let alone get it on the internet without wiping the hard drive.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Put an old-style "intel inside" sticker on it.
Make sure that any model numbers on it somehow suggest that it is a 386, and that its screen is either black and white, or passive-matrix.
Cover all non-legacy ports with a plate having dummy serial ports or somesuch.
The CDROM drive should be made to look like a 5.25 inch floppy drive. (I don't know if notebooks ever had those, but hey, nothing wrong with overkill)
Is anyone gonna steal this thing?
To all you commenting that a laptop wouldn't be 50 pounds:
How many of you slashdotters have actually seen a bicycle? Thats right, its an athletic event. (Oh the horror!) I just want to point out, that a bicycle has wheels. So, a 50 lb bicycle wouldn't be that hard to move.
Check out Spire USA. They make killer packs, durable as hell with cordura and other quality fabrics. Mine has a built-in padded sleave for the laptop and tons of other cool features. Plus it's bomber and looks good. I've used mine for years and it still looks new-ish.
Micron has started selling a laptop with built in thumb scanner. My military unit is already talking to them. Too bad it is a P-4 system.
Micron laptop with thumb scanner
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
Computer stores learned this the hard way. Used to be, when you went to the CDW showroom half the floor model laptops (locked down with a cable lock) would have been stripped of every removeable part, from hard drives to taking a screwdriver to the bottom access panel and stripping out the RAM.
Lately CDW locks the laptops up with this wire bondage cage that makes component removal more difficult, but you still see the occasional machine where a small hand has managed to wiggle out the 2.5 hard drive, etc.
My oldest laptop is designed so when the cable lock is in the 'security slot', you cannot remove the hard drive.
Some Toshiba models have two points to attach a cable lock, the second being below the (plastic) door that covers the PCMCIA slots. Attach a physically large security lock, and you block access to the eject button and/or the cards.I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
Agreed.
An interesting statistic -- generally an attacker with a knife is much more likely to cut a victim to 'show he means business' than an attacker with a gun. Generally, people attacked by a gun-wielding assaliant are less likely to be injured.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
If there's any inference to be made here, I don't think it's that gun muggers have more self-discipline than knife muggers. It seems obvious to me that anybody who uses intentional injury as a form of communication would prefer a knife to a gun. Despite all the "just wing him" scenes in the movies, a shooter can't really control whether a gunshot is fatal. I don't know much about the professional standards in the your-money-or-your-life business, but unnecessary homicides would seem to be counterproductive. On the other hand, empathy is obviously not a professional qualificantion....
Biometrics are supposedly making it into mainstream devices en masse since they can finnaly make the hardware cheap enough. Expect it in 2003 onward as a matter of course.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
if you piss her off you are dead!
For some real enlightenment, check out the statistics on the percentage of murder victims with cocaine in their bloodstream.
The unpopular inference is that firearms restrictions may actually increase the number of victims injured in these crimes. According to the cops, such crimes are acts of desparation by addicts in withdrawal, so they are not entirely rational... but they also want an easy quiet crime that won't make the newspapers.Laptops are a popular target because they are easy to turn into cash, and often left unattended. This makes them more attractive than say, a purse, which may or may not contain items of value.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
There is some CPU overhead, but otherwise the mechanism is well-tested, stable, and secure.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
I've got a Panasonic Toughbook.
:)
I'm not worried about someone trying to steal it because it's metal plated, about 166 MHZ, runs commandline FreeBSD and HEAVY.
and besides, I'm just gonna get some spikes put on it, and hit the bastard who tries to take it with the ACTUAL laptop.
Now that's justice.
Toshiba T1200XE
12MHz 286, 1Meg of RAM, 20M HD, mono screen.
'Nuff said.
IBM has some pretty nice new security that allows for even the HDDs within laptops to be locked up, even when the HDDs are removed from the machine and put in another machine. Pretty nice for securing data, and would have been nice for the company to know that the data couldn't be accessed.
Please. If I stole a laptop for the purpose of corporate espionage, I think I would have the resources to swap the drive electronics, or, if all else fails, the platters. If you want to secure your data, encrypt it.
Thats cause giving someone a little cut will hurt them, and motivate them to resist less.
Shooting someone in the foot is very loud, messy, and the victim will probably make a whole helluva lot of noise.
More people die from guns than knives in robberies, but the stats are quite similar. The biggest problem is that many people do not see knives as being a lethal weapon, and resist more.
Still, we weren't talking about street zombies with a declining brain cell count. We were talking about professional thieves carrying out carefully planned robberies.